SLS-STQ: A Novel Scheme for Securing Spatial–Temporal Top-$k$ Queries in TWSNs-Based Edge Computing Systems

Abstract

A novel network paradigm of edge computing, namely, two-tiered wireless sensor networks (TWSNs), has been proposed by researchers in recent years for its high scalability and robustness. However, in the TWSNs-based edge computing systems, the storage nodes, which are located at the upper layer of the systems, are prone to be attacked by adversaries because they play a key role in bridging sensor nodes and Sink, which may lead to the disclosure of all the data stored on them as well as some other potentially devastating results. In this article, we study the integrity-and-privacy preservation problem for spatial–temporal Top- $k$ queries in the TWSNs-based edge computing systems and propose a sequence-encryption-based lightweight scheme named sequence-encryption-based lightweight scheme for securing spatial–temporal Top- $k$ queries (SLS-STQ) to solve the problem. In SLS-STQ, three algorithms, namely, the report preparation algorithm, the query processing algorithm, and the integrity verification algorithm, are designed for the sensor nodes, the storage nodes, and Sink, respectively. The theoretical analysis shows that SLS-STQ is able to achieve both integrity validation and privacy preservation with low computational complexity, and the simulation results show that SLS-STQ is much more efficient than the related state-of-the-art schemes.